Michelle Bachmann sounds like a bit of a kook, right?

posted by The Vidiot @ 8:06 AM Permalink

However, I think she's just a really good example of what happens when someone who is uneducated gets a little information and then tries to do something with it. [And I'm not being a snob. Being educated doesn't mean you have to have a bunch of letters after your name.]

It's like the folks who think that the world is run by a secret cabal of rich bankers and royalty, sitting in a mahogany, smoke-filled room, sipping their brandy and deciding the fate of billions with a single word. They have one part right; there is a group of people that controls the fate of the majority in this world, they're just not the 'Illuminati' or 'Bilderbergers' or whatever. With a little education, they would understand that these "power elite" are just people who were born into the right circumstances, raised within a small society that maintains control over most of the resources on the planet, trained from birth to manage and think in a way that maintains their society's control over the many. It's not a secret, you don't have to slash your hand and drip blood on a parchment contract while standing naked in front of a room filled with cloaked men wearing masks. You just have to be born into the right family, go to the right schools, or marry the right people.

Ms. Bachman has been saying some things, deemed outrageous by the media, and while she's getting some of it wrong, she's got the gist right. For instance,

U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann says she fears the Obama administration will create “re-education camps for young people, where young people have to go and get trained in a philosophy that the government puts forward and then they have to go to work in some of these politically correct forums.”

Now, on its face, that sounds a little nuts. "Re-education camps?" Sounds like Orwell, no? However, the gist of what she's saying, the fact that Obama's idea of national service for all, really is all about re-education in a philosophy that the government puts forward. Any time a government program takes groups of people, trains them to function as a unit, teaches them the stated goals of the organization and gets them to perform tasks that upholds those stated goals, you're going to have an element of group-think, socialization, and yes, re-education. (The same can be said for the public school system, by the way. What do you think that's all about? Teaching kids math? No. The public school system creates citizens. It gives people the tools to be workers, not thinkers. Those who come out of the public school system as thinkers do so in spite of the system, not because of it.)

The result of the national service program will be a furtherance of the stated goals of the American government. It will result in even more young people accepting the government as their guiding force in behavior and thought. It will unify those young people into a cohesive citizenry even less likely to question the motives of the government and more likely to submit to its will. US hegemony, already wildly strong, will be made even stronger. And while nothing in the bill says the program will be mandatory, if the incentives to participate are good enough, the program will be, ipso facto, mandatory since any alternatives will not be viable.

So, while Ms. Bachmann's rhetoric is inflammatory and inaccurate, her basic premise, that the service program will be one of indoctrination, is correct.

Additionally, please note the tone the media uses to deride and marginalize her. They don't need to examine what she says because the way she says it digs her own grave. Which is why when I write anything that I want to sound smart, I run it by Mr. Vidiot first. I'm just learning this stuff. He's the one with the [nearly] freakin' PhD in Sociology.

After he reviewed it, he said:
Well said, but remember agency still exists. Hegemony asserts itself by winning the consent of the masses, by shaping alternatives and offering viable solutions that seem normal. Hegemony is never perfect because agency will always exist.

Labels: Bachmann, Barack Obama, GIVE Act, national service act, US hegemony